


Ded Moroz and the American Christmas Miracle

by bopeep



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Christmas Fluff, Christmas Presents, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drinking & Talking, Love Actually References, M/M, Snowball Fight, elf hijinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-26
Updated: 2016-12-26
Packaged: 2018-09-12 08:52:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9064846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bopeep/pseuds/bopeep
Summary: No two Christmases are alike for James and Natasha, pinch hitters for Russia's secret elite magical holiday force. As one of many teams of Ded Moroz and Snegurochkas, Grandfather Frost and his Snow Maiden Granddaughter, they have the unique responsibility of making children happy wherever they are needed.It happens that this year, they're needed in Brooklyn, New York, and things are not off to a great start. Luckily, James rediscovers the spirit of the season in an unlikely toy shop that forces him to really rethink his current employment.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stephrc79](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephrc79/gifts).



_“...yes, boys and girls, each snowflake is different, just like no two snow storms are the same. There is the merciless icy sort, crystalline shards in high winds. Of course there is textbook-perfect snow, sweet floating puffs only loosely threaded together that looks suspiciously like store window plastic variety, landing light as feathers (yes, on your nose and eyelashes but also on black wool coats, knit sweaters, couples kissing and children making angels in the park.) You would rather have that heavy, binding snow for building forts, snowmen, and snowballs, years before you will loathe this kind of snow when it sits heavy on your windshields._  
  
And then there is the lazy, half-assed slush rain if Grandpa Frost can’t seem to feel like he cares this year, which is what you’ve been slogging around in for a week because he is so fucking lazy and waited until the last minute to get his act together.” The young woman’s smile stretched mean and taut, painted red as her hair against pale cheeks, as her scene partner looked up suddenly with a tired frown. “And then, like every year, I trade the child a candy cane for his paper snowflake and ship him off to you, Ded Moroz.”  
  
“Don’t go off-script, Natasha,” he admonished. Outside, a sleeting rain began to hit the windows and Natasha gestured at it meaningfully. Haggard, the man sighed and shook his head.  
  
“Off-script?” She weighed the words dubiously. “Easy for you to say. Decades of the same shtick and suddenly I have to wax poetic about snow for longer than kids can sit still for _Thomas the Tank Engine_ , and you have two lines and give them a present?”  
  
“I just thought this year we could try something different,” he insisted, cracking the joints in his hands with icy snap. He implored her patience with his eyes, deep-set and hollow silver-blue. “I have to interact with every child _individually_. This isn’t a misery contest. We’re both tired. It was a long journey.”  
  
“No shit, it was a long journey. We haven’t been dispatched out of the country in twenty-five years. I was actually starting to make friends with the other maidens.”  
  
“I’m sorry.”  
  
“So am I," she sassed. "None of the other Snegurochkas have to put up with this! You wrote me a goddamn _monologue_!”  
  
“Yeah, well, if nobody’s listening then it’s a _soliloquy_ , isn’t it.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, hoping he might draw the frustration out by his own hand. “It’s a tremendous honor,” he repeated the words they heard constantly from the higher-ups throughout years of rigorous training. They sacrificed a normal life for their mission and over the years it had numbed them somewhat. James took it upon himself to act the leader for once, though they had always thought themselves more of a partnership in spite of the way their superiors treated them. “We are the children’s magic. You gotta remember that. You were a kid once.” Natasha tossed her crown of snowflakes at him.  
  
“I remember. I said that exact thing to myself the moment I saw this pokey piece of tin I have to parade around. You’re saying the words but you’re not in it this year, Grandpa. We had a system. The system was good. Suddenly you want our neighborhood to be the epicenter of modernity, the artistic new take on Grandfather Frost? You know I want to support you, I’m stuck with you for the other 364 moping around the ice, but I don’t think we have time for this. And most of all, I don’t think it’s the _dialogue_ that’s the problem with _this_ particular assignment!” She exclaimed pointedly. It was not the first time they had bickered about his recent attempts at making things interesting. He was wholly tired with the job and couldn't figure out why.  
  
“Would you calm down? You’re making it worse,” he said. Wind pressed itself hard and cold on the window casements and seeped in through aging seals. Natasha hissed in accord.  
  
“We’re running out of time. I am allowed to feel burdened. You can validate my irritation instead of pulling this sagely seasonal depression bullshit.” Natasha fell into an overstuffed chair which matched nothing in the dim classroom. He chose to ignore the jab at his mood.  
  
“We’re out for so short a time, Nat. Every year it’s the same. Don’t _you_ feel like you’re missing something? Some bigger part of yourself?” The young man sighed, running a gloved hand through his hair with a swipe of static. Nat shook her head. He stood suddenly, pushing that question aside once more that asked him what exactly he was missing. “I need to get going.”  
  
“No,” Natasha corrected, stepping between him and the door. “You said you would help me figure out this English report you wrote!” Natasha gestured harshly with the script. “You’re in charge of this holiday, Mr. Morose!”  
  
“ _We_ are, teammate. Let’s take a break. Walk out with me,” he suggested, leaning over to re-lace one of his tall boots. He noticed a smiley scrawled onto the small chair next to him, the hallmark of tiny, bored hands. Practicing their shtick in a basement classroom of a church the day before a big dance number was not rock bottom for he and his Snegurochka, not by a long shot when they had endured bombardments, famine, censorship, and fear, but it was nowhere near one of their top fifty assignments. They’d never had a New York City neighborhood before, much less only a few days to prepare.  
  
“No.” She repeated, her voice dark. “I didn’t trek all the way down here to spend a night in a basement without finishing our preparation, Moroz. Let’s get it out of the way.”  
  
“I need to get toys, okay?” He spat. Nat’s face went blank.  
  
“You don’t already _have_ the toys?”  
  
“No, I don’t have the toys, you know we only just got this assignment and I wasn’t aware that I would ha--- the point is I need to go get the toys.” Natasha held the script in front of him with two hands and tore it down the center.  
  
“I’m not reading your American snow poetry, Grandpa.” She made a show of shoving the pieces in her pocket. “We can be creative when we have the time. This is not the year.”  
  
“Fine. Make up your own.” He picked up her coat from a child’s desk and handed it to her, making it clear she was leaving whether she wanted to or not. “I’m sorry this isn’t always the glamourous dream job they crack it up to be. You can go home and put a Netflix movie on with the Air Bnb girl.” Tromping up the stairs he glanced into the church proper as he passed and nodded towards the dim figures inside. A dull pang echoed in his heart as he pushed out into the blowing winds. He frowned at Natasha.  
  
“You couldn’t be a little more mature about this?” He said, gesturing about as snowflakes whipped in his face. She blinked coolly; they swirled about her without even ruffling her hair.  
  
“Of the two of us, you are in no position to talk to me about maturity,” she replied. “ _I’m James, I wait until the last minute to read my location assignment and then I have no presents for the children which is literally the only thing---_ ”  
  
“I’m just having a weird year, okay?” He cut her off defensively, buttoning his coat out of reflex rather than the cold. “Is that not allowed?”  
  
“It _is_ allowed, but you have to _tell me_ when you’re having a weird year so I can help you be less of a turd about it so we don’t get fired!” Nat smashed a snowball into the back of his neck. James shrieked and she took off running down the sidewalk. He packed a snowball and launched it after her, bending to pick up and hurl another one only to notice too late that she had turned a corner and his snowballs squarely hit a gentleman shoveling the walk just past the toy store front. As the guy turned to cuss him out, James ducked into the toy store with a sigh of relief. A boy at the counter looked up at the jingling of the bells and James thought maybe there were angels singing, too, because those eyes had no business inhabiting that remarkable face when somewhere, a patch of the sky was missing its stars. Water dripped down his neck and James cruelly remembered he didn’t have time for a single thing or thought beyond the mission. He quickly looked away as the clerk cleared his throat.

"It looks like a snow-globe out there.”  
  
“ _Somebody_ pissed off the snow queen,” James grumbled, shaking clumps of snowy debris from the inside of his hood. If he hadn’t been preoccupied with his coat and scarf, he might have noticed that the clerk’s jaw was slightly slack, eyes slightly wide.  
  
“Guess so. _Do you wanna build a snowman?_ ” He asked, a little sing-song in his voice. James looked up from brushing his boots on the front mat.  
  
“Uh, right now?” He asked and the young man behind the counter’s face dropped leaden heavy.  
  
“Oh! Sorry, I thought you were making--- that’s a _Frozen_ thing. You know, the movie?” He hesitated. James stared at him and if Bing Crosby hadn’t been there in the background, the room might have buckled under the silence.  
  
“Right. Sure,” James lied.  
  
“The Snow Queen,” the clerk said, frantically pulling a book from off the display behind him. “Not a very chill lady. Or--- pun, sorry. Ignore that.” James looked at the blonde woman on the cover and laughed too hard at the look on her illustrated pouting face that nearly mirrored Natasha’s. The clerk fiddled with his red and white apron nervously. James looked up from the book.  
  
“Chill indeed,” James said, rolling his shoulders to soothe the kinks of bracing against that horrible melting sensation down his back. The clerk was watching him brightly.  
  
“Is there--- anything I can help you with tonight?” He asked, placing the book back on its stand with the other holiday titles. “Toys are my thing, obviously.” He tapped his name tag, which jingled. Apparently, he was called Sprinkles, though underneath in parentheses he had clearly written (STEVE) in black sharpie, out of embarrassment or utility James couldn’t be sure. He smirked.  
  
“So is Steve the closest English translation of the Elvish? They leave that bit out of the Hobbit?” He asked. Steve laughed, casually pushing soft sweater sleeves up his arms to reveal he was just as plush and built underneath. If James's cheeks colored at the thought, he would blame the cold and the season and positively anything else he could think of.  
  
“It’s in the appendices. Elf names are very complicated. What’s yours?” Steve asked. The man blinked, considering it. He scanned the counter and picked up a stuffed bear with a paper tag and black eye mask. Immediately he took to it.  
  
“Bucky,” he said, holding it next to his face. “See the resemblance?”  
  
“Uncanny,” Steve marveled. “Bucky.” He turned the name over and James decided he was keeping it. “I feel like I know you, Bucky. Do I know you?” He asked and Bucky worried his lip. Most people had that feeling because they had been a child once, and something inside them still felt a tug at their sleeve around him or Nat. He shook his head as innocently as he could. “Ah. Well, nice to meet you, Bucky. Anything I can help you find?” Newly christened, Bucky looked around.  
  
“No, I think I’ll be alright.” To his surprise and delight the place was a very traditional sort of toy shop, probably the kind that earned “yuppie” and “artisanal” as descriptors. There were wooden blocks and old toy train sets, painted dolls and beautiful starry mobiles. It was really a wonderland, even for someone so old as Bucky. There were plush animals of every variety, science kits, glass marbles: treasures all. He sighed happily. “This is a beautiful shop. And I’ve seen toy shops all over the world.”  
  
“Thanks! I’ll be here if you need me--- or anything. Bucky.” The clerk floundered a little, his voice sweet as the wind over fresh snow, and busied himself with a large poster board and markers. Bucky liked his new name, the weightlessness and the novelty it carried that felt old and cherished in Steve’s mouth (he decided to stop thinking about Steve’s mouth.) It almost, but not quite, nudged at the frozen part of him that had him feeling so upended this year. So he, repeating his new name as a mantra, lost himself in the shop, running over the list on his phone and gathering as many toys as his arms could hold before dropping them off at the front counter. Steve looked up from his poster and the bells on his apron jingled. Bucky set down a load of toys and without a word retreated back into the displays, checking his phone as he went. Steve’s curiosity piqued; what kind of a guy who clearly didn’t bring a car to carry them was buying fifty different toys? Bucky caught him staring and couldn’t help but wink, which did all but nothing for alleviating his curiosity. He turned back to his poster board and continued writing.  
  
“What are you working on?” Bucky’s voice caught him off-guard. Surely the man had just been at the model plane display but suddenly was here, so casual and quiet. Steve’s marker line went askew in surprise. The list was bordered with a perfect thick red line now with one wildly out of place streak. He quickly made several more around the edge to look like candy cane stripes and not a moment of--- whatever that was.  
  
“This is for our New York City Christmas Bingo party tomorrow night,” he said, suddenly a little bashful about his drawings on the poster. He was an art student once but right now his gingerbread men were not nearly up to snuff. “We come up with twenty-five holiday activities at the beginning of the month and give out these little punch cards if you spend over fifty bucks and the first thirty people to complete a row get to come to a little party tomorrow for Christmas Eve. The neighbors like to play,” he explained, tapping a stack of cards next to the register. “If you feel like going apeshit festive in the next twenty-four hours, it’s a fucking nightmare to complete it all.”  
  
“Ah. Nothing says last-minute Christmas like 'fucking nightmare,'” Bucky agreed.  
  
“You got lucky, to be honest,” Steve said archly. “This weird blizzard’s got us totally empty. 'Fucking nightmare' averted.”  
  
“You _do_ know that children occasionally come in this store, right? Like children that don’t need to hear curse wo---” The African American man shoveling the walk was at the front door removing his coat when he saw who was chatting up the cashier. “Oh, not _this_ fucker.” Bucky instinctively took a step back.  
  
“Bucky, this is my buddy Sam,” the clerk said. Bucky nodded slowly.  
  
“We kind of met.”  
  
“Uh huh,” Sam snarled as he untangled himself from his scarf, not breaking eye contact with Bucky. “Kind of met to the tune of get the hell outta my store, dude, before I lay you in so much salt you’ll be fresh next July!”  
  
“I hit him with a snowball on accident,” Bucky explained. Steve looked almost impressed. Sam took one sharp step towards him, snow scattering from his boots.  
  
“Twice!”  
  
“Two _accidents_!” Bucky insisted.  
  
“See, you’re already on your way,” Steve laughed as he crossed off SNOWBALL FIGHT on Bucky’s Bingo card. “No harm done, though, right Sam?”  
  
“You’re taking his side?” Sam tore his coat off, exerted and impatient. “Really?”  
  
“Sam,” Steve warned more than pointedly, “he’s buying a third of the store. Not that _income_ is important or anything.”  
  
“Oh.” Sam blinked away his rage. “Then thank you for your patronage and _then_ get the hell outta my store.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” Bucky replied, unfettered. “You have a lot of cool shit.” Sam glared hard and looked to Steve, who seemed wholly enchanted by this comedy and pleading with eyes to accept the compliment. He sighed and dropped the bristle.  
  
“Thanks, man,” he said. Bucky shrugged.  
  
“If you shoveled better you might even get people to see it.”  
  
“Oh my god---” Before Sam could make a move from the front mat Bucky ducked into the next room to peruse the selection of comic books and vintage lunch boxes. Sam grumbled as he unwrapped himself from layers and stuffed them behind the long front counter next to Steve, who was humming a little too brightly. “Don’t think I can’t see that. I have eyes,” Sam glowered. Steve blinked.  
  
“See what?” He asked.  
  
“Uh-huh. _See what._ ” He echoed, and gestured to the other room with a pointed eyebrow raise. Steve waved him off.  
  
“Nothing to see, he's way out of my league. I’m being a good elf,” he assured Sam, carefully removing the Bucky bear from the counter and placing it somewhere less incriminating. Sam rolled his eyes.  
  
“The good elf supposed to be giving heart eyes to the customers instead of helping me shovel?” Sam asked, lowered his voice.  
  
“You lost rock-paper-scissors, you baby. And don’t be _ridiculous_.” Steve flustered as he busied himself ringing up Bucky’s toys. Sam smirked, poking him in the side.  
  
“Uh-huh. Sprinkles got them nice rosy cheeks.”  
  
“Drop it, Jujubee.” Steve flicked Sam’s elf name tag. “Least I didn’t threaten him with rock salt.”  
  
“That’s how you banish demons,” Sam huffed in defense. “I’ve seen _Supernatural_.”  
  
“I’m a _benevolent_ spirit,” Bucky replied in cold monotone from nowhere, setting a thick stack of comics on the counter next to his mountain of toys. Sam glared, sizing up the now complete collection.  
  
“Do all these need to be wrapped?” He asked. Bucky produced a credit card from his pocket, leather gloves clumsily sliding it through the machine. It beeped at him angrily.  
  
“Are you offering?” He said, frowning at the credit card terminal.  
  
“It’s chip,” Sam said obviously, “and policy says yes, but two hundred toys ten minutes before closing in a blizzard on December 23rd says no. I’ll give you five rolls of paper and my best wishes.”  
  
“You’ve got a deal, Jujubee,” Bucky said. Steve was arranging an armful of stuffed animals in a large paper bag.  
  
“Do you work for Instacart or something? Personal shopper?” He asked, folding a rabbit’s ears to fit better in the bag. Bucky avoided his eyes.  
“Nope.”  
  
“For your--- thirty-five children?” Steve raised one eyebrow.  
  
“That’s it. Babymamas in every borough,” Bucky said flatly. Sam snorted. If he hated him before, the ice was melting quickly. “Alimony’s a bitch but, uh, that’s life.” The wind picked up outside and pushed hard enough against the door to jingle the bells. Bucky sighed. “That’s my cue.”

“Stay warm,” Sam said in spite of himself. “Sprinkles here can help you carry your bags if your snowball chuckin’ mitts can’t handle all this.” Steve’s hands were fists beneath the counter. He kept his voice steady.  
  
“Don’t you need help _closing_?” He baited. Sam stared him down.  
  
“No. I got it.” Sprinkles looked at Jujubee like he might wear him as a coat.  
  
“Great,” he said through gritted teeth, and Bucky couldn’t tell what was happening when Steve turned to him. “If you want, I mean. I can--- where do you live?” Bucky couldn’t even begin to remember. What felt like an entire chorus of Jingle Bell Rock underscored the horrible quiet.  
  
“Uh---”  
  
“I mean, I can walk with you if you want a blizzard buddy,” the clerk quickly covered, picking up his winter gloves in a charade-like gesture. “I’m heading east, if you’re---”  
  
“Yeah.” Bucky suddenly picked up the line and realized what was happening and what would happen and what he had no way of stopping from happening now that it happened and it all fell out of his mouth at once. “Yeah, I’m going that way, East, is also--- where I’m heading. I’d walk with you.” He asserted. “That’d be nice.” Sprinkles looked relieved.  
  
“Of course! Yeah, that’s great. Shoulda put ‘make a new friend’ on the Christmas Bingo, you’d be almost half-way.” Steve put the bag of teddy bears into Bucky’s hands and they briefly made contact, just a whisper. Sam had to turn around and pretend to rearrange the wrapping supplies to keep his pleased grin at bay. “I’ll see you later, Sam.”  
  
“I doubt it,” Sam said under his breath. Awkwardly Steve and Bucky divvied up the bags and headed out into the snow. When the front door bells signaled their exit Sam finally let himself laugh long and hard. It was worth the snow to the face, he decided. It was well worth it.

* * *

Bucky felt his phone buzz in his pocket and, when he ignored it, noticed the wind pick up. He sighed. _Fucking typical, Nat._ His friend (a brand new experience that Bucky was just trying out and frankly wasn’t totally unhappy about) walked alongside him, their feet crunching the snow underfoot in pleasant rhythm. Steve was humming absently. If it was a Christmas song, he didn’t recognize it.  
  
“Is that a carol?” He asked finally when he’d exhausted the possibilities he knew. Steve looked at him, bewildered.  
  
“Yeah,” he said. “You don’t know it?” He sang a line and Bucky warmed to his voice like a pauper at the window, looking in on something intimate and sweet he’d never had.  
  
“Can’t say I do.”  
  
“It’s pretty popular. I don’t know how you’ve avoided it.”  
  
“Magic,” Bucky responded with a shrug, continuing forward. Steve smiled against the snow, inclining his face downward so as not to take the brunt of the wind. “This is rough. I appreciate your help. You really have nowhere else to be?” Steve shook his head.  
  
“Really, it’s nothing,” he insisted. “It’s the least I can do for somebody so charitable. Not to mention I could probably carry all these bags by myself.” Bucky rolled his eyes. He was specifically trained for this exact scenario, but in higher winds with heavier toys in darker, colder European climes. He grunted.  
  
“So could I, but you seemed so hell-bent on helping.”  
  
“If you don’t want me here, Buck, I can easily leave this whole colony of bears in this snow drift.” Steve stopped and held one bag out to the side precariously. Bucky turned to look back.  
  
“You wouldn’t.”  
  
“Of course I wouldn’t. They would be too cold.” Steve and Bucky continued forward, snowflakes swirling around them. “You, on the other hand, one swift shove and I could avenge Sam in one fell swoop, take off running.” A salt truck slowly slid by on the street, flashing lights bouncing off the apartment buildings. Bucky juggled his bags.  
  
“That’d violate your elf contract immediately,” he pointed out. Steve shrugged.  
  
“Sprinkles has been unsatisfied with the system. He could go rogue.”  
  
“Trouble in toy paradise?” Bucky asked, keeping a smile at bay.  
  
“The hours are brutal,” Steve sighed dramatically, “but the benefits are clutch.”  
  
“Free candy canes?”  
  
“Unlimited. But no dental!” Bucky feigned disgust.  
  
“Abuse.”  
  
“Tell me about it.” Stealing a glance, Bucky noted that Steve was smiling almost indecently. Whether or not his heart was actually part ice, Bucky never knew for certain, but he was beginning to finally think it capable of melting.  
  
“Guess I should count my blessings," he said.  
  
“Why’s that?” Steve asked, a playful lilt underscoring. Bucky, too, went rogue.  
  
“Because I’m a Santa.” For half a second he worried it came out wrong, but nothing happened. Steve didn’t bat an eye; the patter continued.  
  
“Well, shit. Was this like a secret shopper situation? You’ve been the boss man this whole time?” He joked. Bucky chuckled.  
  
“No, no. Russian division. You’re safe, Sprinkles.”  
  
“Thank god. Guess that explains all these toys, then. Is there like a Russian Christmas market or something?” Bucky shook his head, adjusting his bags.  
  
“Nah, just a circuit of churches and homes. It’s divided by region, recruits dispatched based on need. I got a pretty small one this year, all things considered,” he shrugged, remembering his very meticulous map at home and the last-minute paperwork that had been shoved at him and Natasha before they were shipped out. “Pinch hitter.”  
  
“That’s nice. Sounds like a sweet gig.”  
  
“Maybe. I’m behind this year,” Bucky said to the pavement. “Lot of pressure.”  
  
“I bet you’re great at it.”  
  
“We’ll see if I can get it together,” he sighed. “Need I remind you the only Christmas Bingo I crossed out was nailing your friend with a snowball?”  
  
“You say it like that’s disappointing.” Bucky wouldn’t look up at him but he could hear a smile in his voice. “To tell you the truth I haven’t done anything on that list this year. Shocking, I know.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Guess I haven’t felt very Christmassy.” There was a distance in Steve’s voice that Bucky recognized, he hated to admit. He felt himself warming to him all the more.  
  
“This from the man jingling down the street.”  
  
“Yeah, yeah,” Steve chuckled. He looked up at the front of the brownstone where they stopped and frowned. “I feel like I’ve been here before.”  
  
“Pretty standard looking building,” Bucky shrugged. “Hey, tell you what, when we get the bags in the building, you can chuck a snowball at me and cross off the same box, put us both at one for the year.” Steve was following him up the icy stairs and it only suddenly occurred to him that this guy could very easily be a psychopath or a Craigslist killer or--- “Do you want some coffee? Warm up before you have to go? Or do elves only drink hot chocolate?” Bucky asked as they reached the door. Steve cocked his head and his hat jingled in purposeful punctuation.  
  
“I’m off the clock.” The way he smiled was otherworldly, kind of pulled halfway to one side like he needed to be kissed silly before it slid right off into the snow. Bucky regretted locking eyes but he couldn’t look away.  
  
“Something stronger, then,” he suggested.  
  
“Sure.”  
  
“Oh, uh,” Bucky shook himself from his reverie, fishing keys out of his pocket. “My roommate will be up there.” Steve blinked.  
  
“Cool,” he replied, lacking anything better to say. He hadn’t expected anything nearly so advanced though now it worried him. Bucky turned back to the door and winced. _Smooth, real smooth. Just like in those American movies, a real smooth operator. He’s not that kind of---- elf._ “I guess we can’t rehearse our screamo band like we planned,” Steve joked quickly.  
  
“I just--- in case you were worried we’d be alone,” Bucky recovered. Steve laughed then, a shock of relief.  
  
“You know, I did have this weird inclination that you were hiding something,” he said as they tromped up the stairs, rambling as he tried to remember the way they came in in case he had to get out but kind of haphazardly just watching Bucky’s backside in his long trench coat and wishing he wasn’t. “I mean, I know, it’s stupid.... But hey, I don’t know. You watch the news and all these dumb VH1 catfishing shows and cold case files and probably I watch too many of those procedurals anyway but you know, this stuff happens, people hide all kinds of bizarre things all the---” Bucky opened the door to his apartment with a huff and two beautiful women were sprawled on the couch just inside the frame. “ _Fuck_.” Natasha looked up and the other woman instantly recognized him.  
  
“Steven!” Her British accent hugged his name with sweet familiarity and Bucky was equally surprised. “Merry Christmas, darling.”  
  
“That’s why it looked familiar,” Steve said under his breath. Bucky looked between the two of them. Natasha was already sizing him up with her eyes.  
  
“You’ve been avoiding me,” said the woman, playfully chastising.  
  
“I’ve been avoiding everyone, Peggy,” Steve replied, setting down his bags. She framed her face in her hands over the back of the couch, auburn curls settling beside.  
  
“I see you’ve met my boarder James,” she said.  
  
“Uhh---” Steve looked to Bucky and assumed he’d missed a beat. Bucky didn’t seem to be bothered. “Yeah. Bought out the toy store.”  
  
“About time,” Natasha said, untangling her legs from Peggy’s. She snatched a bag from Bucky as he stepped in. Steve stood awkwardly in the door frame. The British woman watched him.  
  
“You can come in, you know,” she said. “I know him from school,” she explained to Natasha, who hummed approvingly. Bucky looked between them and connected the dots. He wasn’t sure if he was relieved or deeply wounded to assume they had slept together. It wasn’t like they were even friends, really. Not in a real way.  
  
“I promised him some coffee.”  
  
“We’re out,” the red-haired woman said. “I will not be wrapping these, Grandpa.”  
  
“C’mon, Nat.”  
  
“Nice to meet you, Steven” she said, extending her hand. “Big fan of your work at the North Pole. You gonna help the old man wrap all these?” Steve shrugged.  
  
“I could. Are we watching _Love, Actually_?” He asked, a little too excited at what he recognized on the television. Bucky quickly shut down the interaction.  
  
“You’ve helped enough. I literally just met this guy, you can’t just make him stay---” But Peggy had already wrapped Steve in her arms and led him to the couch.  
  
“We’re doing a shot every time they say Christmas.”  
  
“Jesus Christ, Peg.”  
  
“Precisely yes. It’s what he would have wanted for his birthday celebration and you could use a break.”  
  
“I’m doing fine, Peggy," he asserted, voice low.  
  
“Of course you are, darling.” She took two more shot glasses from the tray on the coffee table. “It’s Peppermint Schnapps and chocolate syrup.”  
  
“Um, I should do these presents---” Bucky attempted to back away into the bedroom but froze when Steve turned towards him, eyes sharp and challenging.  
  
“Santa can’t handle his alcohol?” He asked dully. Natasha’s eyebrows bucked up and Bucky immediately shot her a warning glance.  
  
“Ты сказал ему об этом?” She hissed.  
  
“Нет. Дура.”  
  
“Он милый. Ты пьешь с ним.”  
  
“Come on, Nat. I’m going to ruin Christmas if I do. I'm supposed to be the efficient one. I have a reputation.” Bucky whined.  
  
“Then we’re all ruining it together. This is your chance to do something different.” Nat stared and Bucky eventually plopped down, too close to Steve and very aware of it. She handed the chocolate syrup to Steve, who laughed.  
  
“What do I even do with this?” He asked.  
  
“James is your partner. You switch off. When they say Christmas, you do chocolate first and a swig of peppermint second.” Bucky was surprised when Steve just blindly went for it. Steve nodded approvingly.  
  
“That’s good. I hate that it’s good.” He handed the bottle to Bucky warily. “We playing? I can always go, if---” Bucky snatched the bottle.  
  
“I’m ruining Christmas. Let’s do it.”

* * *

By the time Nat and Peggy had stumbled off to bed and the bottle was empty, Steve was draped unceremoniously across Bucky’s lap and the two were inseparable. Bucky had a lot of questions (“is everyone in this movie blind? She is not chubby!” and “how could anyone want to hurt emma thomspon?” and “hot karl should have dated sad sign guy, he is so repressed,”) and the movie had reached its climactic performance. Bucky recognized the song through a peppermint haze.  
  
“That’s your song, Steve!” He slurred, shaking his new friend. “Hey, you awake? That’s the song you sang for me in the snow!”  
  
“That’s the one. All I want for Christmas is you,” he said, turning his face up to look Bucky in the eye.  
  
“It’s not a bad song.”  
  
“I’m just a bad singer.” Steve looked over at Bucky’s Christmas Bingo Checklist, now slightly worse for wear on the coffee table. “You’ve got four in a row. Christmas movie, snowball fight, Christmas carols, and wrapping presents. You’re so close, you could just mark it,” he said. “You can come to the party with me tomorrow, if you wanted to.”  
  
“You’re not a bad singer,” Bucky drawled, remembering. “You have a sweet voice.”  
  
“I am a bad singer. But I’m so good at wrapping presents,” Steve rolled off of Bucky and onto the floor. “I can wrap all those gifts for you. I do that for a living.” Bucky scrambled to grab him by the collar.  
  
“You’re a guest. I have to wrap them. It’s my job.”  
  
“But you’re not doing it! You’re the one ruining Christmas, you piece of shit Santa.” He swatted Bucky's hands away and they tangled for a moment on the floor.  
  
“That’s because you’re such a distraction.”  
  
“Is this where I get to make a naughty list joke?”   
  
“You’re on the nice list.”  
  
“But you aren’t?”  
  
“I’m on the unemployed list.” Their lips were so close that Bucky only ghosted a wisp closer to connect with Steve and sent a shudder down his body. Steve pulled back in surprise and Bucky felt a pang of rage then, at himself more than anything but also at the world, his luck, and all of Christmas past and future.   
  
“Sorry. Just cold,” Steve said, blinking bewildered. “I haven’t---- been with another human like this in a hundred years.” He was embarrassed then but Bucky laughed in relief.  
  
“Makes two of us.” He rolled his eyes knowing only one of them was being literal. The alcohol sat warm in his veins, slowing. Steve leaned into him and switched on the Netflix yule log, dopey digital flames casting a cozy light on their faces.  
  
“This is nice.”  
  
“Yeah.” Bucky hesitated a bit, considering the reality, and Steve seemed to suddenly realize it.  
  
“I’m sorry, I met you like five hours ago. This is a lot,” he frowned.  
  
“Right. Of course, right.” Bucky scrubbed a hand over his face, shifting to get up. “I’m sorry, I’m gonna call you a---”  
  
“Don’t,” Steve cut him off, pleading with a child’s bargain. “Please stay with me.” Bucky couldn’t help but feel he would never, ever say no to him. And with his weight, so pleasant, flush against him, he felt whole.  
  
“I will.”  
  
“This was,” Steve mused, watching the digital fire, “the worst Christmas I’ve ever had. But I thought when you came in the store, maybe it wouldn’t be. I don’t know why.”  
  
“I ruin Christmases,” Bucky slurred with a huff. Steve shook his head.  
  
“I don't believe that at all.” Steve sighed through a yawn was asleep under Bucky’s arm in no time at all. 

* * *

Bucky dreamt that he was standing in an open field, snow like thick white frosting sparkling in the starlight of a cold clear night. His breath fogged in clouds around him, building instead of dissipating, and no matter in which direction he moved he couldn’t see far enough ahead to go anywhere, and in his head echoed the voices of one hundred spirits, archaic demands and incantations. He was lost. The voices suddenly seized with a gust of wind.

And he thought he heard Steve’s voice saying goodbye. He woke up in tears, alone, surrounded by wrapping paper and knee-deep in the kind of hangover that reminded you why adults aren’t supposed to ingest that much sugar with their poison. There was a note on the counter.

 _Hey Nat, Peggy, and Bucky,_ _  
_ _Had to take off for the holiday hours at the store. Please come to the party tonight! I had a really lovely time with you._ _  
_ _Steve_  
  
...and his phone number was scrawled beneath.  
  
“Who’s Bucky?” Nat asked over his shoulder. Bucky scrubbed his hands over his face.  
  
“That’s me. Obviously it’s me. _Fuck_.” He remembered in shades and slivers what happened. He remembered Steve’s sweet eyes, the soft pull of his sweater, and that lousy sass-talking mouth. _Oh_ , he remembered that mouth.  
  
“He already has a nickname for you,” Nat noticed, taking a box of cereal from the top of the refrigerator and digging into it. Bucky couldn’t stomach the idea of more sugar and groaned.  
  
“Obviously he does. Oh my god, how did this happen,” he whined. “This is so inconvenient.” And moreover, he hated to admit, he liked that shitty, stubborn boy who invited himself to his life _so much.  
_  
“You have to go to this party,” Natasha shook him from his thoughts through a mouthful of Apple Jacks. Bucky wheeled on her.  
  
“Are you insane? No. We have so much to do tonight. There isn’t time!” Nat shushed him, looking carefully towards Peggy’s door.  
  
“We’ll make time,” she said with a shrug. “I know I was a pill about it yesterday but honestly I got over it and decided we should just burn the whole thing down and call it a wash. And you have to go. You just crammed a month worth of flirting into one evening.”  
  
“That’s exactly why I’m not going.” Bucky slumped into a kitchen chair and held his head. It moved too fast to last, and it couldn’t even if he wanted it to. And he worried that he did. Natasha frowned.  
  
“What?”  
  
“There’s no way this is going to work. We’re leaving,” he rasped, wishing his voice would at least sound strong if he didn’t feel it. “It can’t last.”  
  
“Who says it has to last? You could just---” Bucky cut her off before she could say something crass.  
  
“That’s not enough!”  
  
“So you want nothing?” She asked. He nodded.  
  
“So I want nothing. That’s right.”  
  
“You’re a masochist. You’re ruining this whole experience for yourself taking everything so seriously." She was actually angry now. "You wanted this year to be different. You wanted to change. This is exactly what you were asking for, isn’t it?”  
  
“In hundreds of years of tradition, I don’t remember a single story where the spirit of Christmas, the chosen one with the gift of responsibility and the responsibility of gifts, shirked his duty in order to get laid.”  
  
“That we know of,” she pointed out. Bucky rubbed the sleep out of his eyes angrily. He wanted more than anything to get out of his civilian wear that reeked of peppermint and oversleep and--- _well_.  
  
“What am I supposed to tell him?” He hissed, pulling his hair out of his face and back into a broken bun. “ _T_ _hanks for letting me kiss your face, as of 12:01 2017 I go back in the box until next year? Dasvidaniya?_ No. I have a responsibility to magic and happiness!”  
  
“So maybe think about bringing some to _him_.” Peggy stood in the doorway. “If you won’t be kind to yourself.” Natasha blanched.  
  
“You shouldn’t have heard that.”  
  
“You paid your rent in cash, have one change of clothes and a literal sack of toys. I don’t ask questions.” Peggy shrugged and turned the electric kettle on. “Steve had a hard year. It’s not my business to tell you why. But he deserves to be happy. If you have that capability.” Bucky felt the words sink into the air of the room, sudden gravity. He looked between them, feeling distinctly double-teamed.  
  
“I think you’re both jumping to conclusions.”  
  
“Respectfully disagree. He is very taken with you,” Peggy said.  
  
“ _Dis_ respectfully disagree,” Nat amended. Bucky put on his coat.  
  
“I’m too old for him.” He swallowed dry.  
  
“Time is relative.”  
  
“Then I’m too _conceptual_ for him,” he barked. He’d never said that out loud in quite such biting terminology but technically that was true.  
  
“Well that sounds like a personal problem.” Peggy folded her arms over her nightgown. “Aren’t you in the Christmas miracle business?”  
  
“Just--- be glad I’m not gonna be the one to hurt him, alright? The discussion is over. There’s too much to do and boyfriend goodbyes aren't on the list.” He shut the front door behind him softly and was gone without another word. Natasha groaned.  
  
“What a martyr!” She exclaimed. Peggy considered asking for a full explanation and decided, being that she was spending Christmas otherwise alone, she didn’t care what circumstances brought them together.  
  
“Don't worry,” she asserted, picking up the note. “He's going to this party.”

* * *

Bucky kicked through the snow on the sidewalks in his bare feet, coat wide open and inviting worried glances from neighbors. In all the years he spent slinging toys for the Red Room’s Traditional Magic and Cultural Glories division, he’d never gotten himself into this kind of trouble. He’d had blizzards and natural disasters of every sort, economic crises and crises of faith and years where his regional assignment contained too many houses to reasonably visit, but never _emotional_ trouble. He went to the bodega where the man behind the counter always had coffee and terrible advice, both of which he found himself needing. The front door’s bells had long since been replaced with two washers on a string that dully marked his entrance. A scruffy young man behind the counter was scratching lottery tickets, looking like the walking dead on his feet, a band-aid slapped across his nose. He always had hot coffee.

“Any luck today, Clint?” Bucky asked.  
  
“No. But I’m holding out for the Christmas miracle.” Clint looked up and if he noticed Bucky wasn’t wearing shoes he didn’t say anything. He’d had those mornings himself.  
  
“You and all of New York City,” Bucky grumbled. “Coffee, please. And one fortune.” Clint called out to the back of the shop.  
  
“Hey, Luis. Guy wants a fortune up here,” he said with a smile. Luis was as good as the news; Bucky liked to hear what the locals were up to. The young Latino sat himself on a milk crate, adjusting his jacket and sizing Bucky up.  
  
“Got it. Okay. I got you. What’s on your mind, man?”  
  
“I’m miserable and I’m listening,” Bucky said honestly. Luis nodded, excited.  
  
“I got just the thing, man. So yesterday night, right? I’m walking with my Uncle Marco yesterday night, we’re taking in the holiday lights. He likes the new LED but I can’t stand them. You know me, I got sensitive eyes. I miss the traditional bulbs, they just had that ember glow. So we’re walking and the snow is charming and he’s telling me about his son Alfonso, my cousin, and Fonsi’s girlfriend Vanessa is really into Christmas. Like she’s Christmas crazy, you know? And she works down by those little shops with the cute storefronts, she does nails. So this girl Tanya comes into the salon, and she’s asking for candy cane nails cause she’s Christmas crazy too, right, but in a tacky way, not like Vanessa. She’s all class. And Tanya says she and her husband are doing this challenge, right, and they’re doing everything on this crazy Christmas list because they’re feeling like all blue and shit this year, and if you win, right? You get to go to this crazy party on Christmas Eve at the toy shop. I’m walking and thinking goddamn, Tio, are you telling me that Fonsi’s girlfriend’s client and her boyfriend are going this Christmas challenge party and you want to crash it? And he says, nah, mijo, I just got this feeling like somebody will want to know.” Silence followed and Bucky stared.  
  
“About the party,” he repeated.  
  
“That’s you, my man. Tio had that feeling and I’m getting that feeling. Like it’s cosmic, you know. You should go to that Christmas party. It’s gonna be lit!” He said with his eyebrows high. Clint high-fived him.  
  
“Nice pun.” Bucky pulled out his Bingo card from his pocket and Luis and Clint gasped in tandem.  
  
“Oh shit! It’s that list!” Luis took a step back. This was too much for him. Bucky sighed.  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“This is cosmic,” Luis gaped. Clint clapped him on the back.  
  
“That’s bananas,” he marveled. “Luis, damn. You outdo yourself sometimes, dude.”  
  
“It’s a gift, man. I get tips.” Luis looked supremely satisfied. “You only got one left!”  
  
“Cookies,” Bucky pointed to the empty box on his Bingo card. Clint handed him a styrofoam cup of coffee and he inhaled the steam. Luis snapped his fingers.  
  
“Oh my god, so easy. I got a recipe from my grandmama for these cinnamon things, they look like little moons.” Luis disappeared into the narrow aisles, grabbing ingredients. “You probably already got flour, right?” Bucky tried to find him but he was gone among the odd groceries.  
  
“I’m not gonna---”  
  
“This is too freaky to pass up, man. If you’re feeling down, just take a chance, huh? What have you got to lose?” Clint was more animated than Bucky had seen him in the past few days. He was living vicariously.  
  
“I know you could just lie and say you made the cookies but honestly, dude, the magic of Christmas is not something I fuck with, you know?” Luis dropped a box of butter, a bag of powdered sugar, and a bottle of cinnamon on the counter. "Jesus and Santa both watching you like a hawk this time of year.” Bucky felt his headache settling into a steady throb.  
  
“I can’t pay for all this, I barely have coffee money, guys---”  
  
“My treat. Christmas miracles, man.” Clint held up another handful of scratchers. “You’re gonna be alright, pal.” Bucky wanted so badly to reason it all away, but his fingers twitched and that gaping ache knocked at his heart with Steve’s voice and he nodded in appreciation.  
  
“Thank you.” 

* * *

Bucky went back to the house with his convenience store bag. He scowled at the smiley face on the bag. What was he doing? He fully expected Peggy and Nat to be exactly where he left them, pouting with their goddamn matchmaker prodding, and he’d have to explain why he had baking ingredients. He was pleasantly surprised to find they were not. Instead, they were full-force tackling the rest of the presents, wrapping paper and ribbons and tape all around them like a confetti cannon had gone off. They looked up suddenly when he opened the front door like deer caught in headlights.  
  
“I thought you said you weren’t helping?” He said.  
  
“I changed my mind.”  
  
“We’re almost done, James.” Peggy smiled serenely. “So you can go to the ball.”  
  
“Yeah, well, I still gotta cross off another box if I want to go to the ball, you rodents,” Bucky grumbled. “How is this possibly happening?” He asked the universe. Natasha taped down the corner of a red-wrapped box.  
  
“Christmas miracles.”  
  
“Why does everyone keep saying that?!” He exclaimed. “This is going to end in flames!”  
  
“Super hot and flaming, yes, I am very hopeful,” she mused. Peggy smirked, curling a tight ribbon. Bucky huffed, exasperated.  
  
But somehow he still found himself preheating the oven. He thought of that stupid, sweet man, and decided.

* * *

For the first time in five years, Sam was overjoyed when the guests began to arrive for the charity Christmas party because it meant Steve would finally shut up about his evening with the guy who bought a hundred toys. Steve was pacing back and forth in a tizzy, worried he overstepped his bounds one minute and worrying he didn’t go far enough the next, panicked that the man might show up at the party but terrified that he might not see him ever again. Sam was grateful for the steady stream of last minute shoppers, but that didn’t seem to occupy Steve’s mind enough to keep him quiet. Even as they set up the store for the party with a long table for the big gingerbread house competition, Steve was angrily rehashing every detail in his mind, fuming all the while and driving Sam up the walls with his palpable anger. When the dork who ran the electronics boutique next door showed up with gingerbread house supplies Sam was about ready to hug him.  
  
“You look uncharacteristically glad to see us,” the boutique owner, Tony, said to Sam as he handed him a grocery bag. “How much nog in the egg this year?”  
  
“None yet,” Sam groused. “But I’ve been ready to start since about ten AM." The rest of what Sam affectionately called The Nerd Herd followed: the doctors from the practice down the street, Jane, Bruce, and Darcy. Together, the five of them made up the most fearsome pub trivia team in the neighborhood, and in spite of the fact that Sam worked in a toy store, he kept them on their toes between a major in psychology and minor in music education. Before Steve’s blue period, he covered fine art and sports trivia. He hadn’t been out with them in months. Jane gave Sam a hug in spite of her over-sized winter coat.  
  
“Thank you for hosting this again,” she said brightly. “I look forward to winning this gingerbread house contest every year.” Tony scowled.  
  
“You two always hit below the belt with some cute shit. Gingerbread doghouse, gingerbread swing set.”  
  
“Nobody likes a sore loser, Tony, look at all the energy you’re wasting on that frown that could be spent on your architecturally unsound and stylistically bankrupt monstrosity,” Darcy sang, hanging her coat on the rack and revealing a snowman magic eye sweater that positively baffled. “Where’s Stevie?” She asked. Sam pointed to the book nook; Steve was pacing and staring down at his phone.  
  
“Trying to compose a note to a boy,” Sam sighed. Jane smiled.  
  
“That’s cute.”  
  
“Yeah, you didn’t have to hear him waffling like no tomorrow all day about it.”  
  
“World championship of waffles, I’ll bet,” Tony mused as he ripped open a bag of Twizzlers and stuck one in his mouth. He began laying out graham crackers. “Waffles for days.”  
  
“Who’s the boy?” Bruce asked, wiping his fogged glasses in the hem of his shirt. Sam rolled his eyes and helped Tony set each place for the competing teams.  
  
“This sullen nightmare prince who waltzed in at ten to closing yesterday and--- _son of a bitch_.” Sam caught sight of Bucky suddenly through the glazed front window. He was decked head to toe in what looked to be blue velvet and white fur. He waved stupidly at Sam. “Speak of the devil.” More guests were arriving happily, filling the store, and Bucky stayed glued to the sidewalk, looking in. Tony blinked rapidly.  
  
“We’re all seeing him though, right? We’re all seeing that wizard, not just me?” It was then that Steve finally came through to greet everyone and noticed with a draft of cold wind from the outside the specter that was Bucky at the window, ghostly pale and seemingly sparkling in the lighted frost. Steve blanched.  
  
“Is he going to come in?” He asked aloud. Sam huffed.  
  
“I don’t give a shit but he’s starting to freak me out so if you don’t go talk to him I know some police that will,” he said, and Steve was pushing through to the door before he finished the sentence.

* * *

Bucky regretted wearing the uniform with every step he took on the street. Children looked up at him with wide, accusing eyes as they passed. Children always knew. They had some sort of horrible sixth sense for magic, and they just _knew_. Every cat ever unnecessarily out of a bag was a child’s fault, and Bucky would know because he worked with children, and working with children is equal parts rewarding and otherworldly exhausting. In hundreds of years, children had managed not to change in that they found trouble in every corner of the world, in every era, in every possible way, with their sweet smiles and big hearts, and the job of looking after them kept Bucky thankful and present. The long coat was a requisite of the job; it was lined with cloudy puffs of pure white fox fur and silver stitching brightly shone like moonlight against the blue velvet. It attracted a good bit of attention as a matter of course when he delivered presents, more so when in the eleventh hour he inevitably conjured the ridiculous long snow beard and staff made of ice. He was considering how severe his performance review would look this year when Steve burst out the front door of the shop, too flustered to have bothered with a coat.  
  
“You came,” he said dumbly. Bucky nodded. “I was so sure you weren't coming."  
  
"I didn't want to lead you on, Steve," Bucky said, unable to look him in the eye. "But I'm here." Steve frowned, misunderstanding.  
  
"You’re--- that’s an incredible coat.”  
  
“This is my uniform,” Bucky said. Steve swallowed.  
  
“You have to work Christmas Eve?” He asked. Bucky shrugged. He looked around. Folks passing by were not listening, huddled in hats and scarves. He sighed and resigned himself entirely.  
  
“Technically my big night is New Year’s. But I do, yes.” He produced a bag of powdered crescent cookies. “I finished the Bingo card. Merry Christmas.” Steve grinned, inspecting the treasure before slipping it in his apron pocket.  
  
“Thanks. Can you come in for a minute? Stay?” The word hit Bucky like a brick once more; he never stayed. Bucky looked in through the window at the gaping party-goers and made a decision. He put his hand to the glass and webs of frost seized the pane in icy prisms, lacing careful and quick lattices from the tips of his fingers until the view was totally obscured. Steve gaped and Bucky gave him a moment to process in utter bafflement until he realized Steve was visibly shivering. He threaded Steve’s bare arms around his waist and pulled the coat around him, close and warm.   
  
“I can’t stay,” he said into the crook of Steve’s neck. “Do you see why?” Snowflakes danced around them and Steve nodded.  
  
"You weren't kidding. That whole time, you weren't kidding."  
  
"Nope. Astonishingly, I wanted to be honest with you." He admitted. "I like you."  
  
“Do you have to kill me now that I know?” he asked, deflecting. Bucky chuckled.  
  
“I don’t know.” He breathed a cloud behind Steve, content to hold him there in the cold until the snow covered them both forever, if such a thing were possible. “I’ve never wanted to stay before now.”  
  
“Could you ask for an extension? I hear the Easter Bunny is considering an early retirement. Could be an opening for you,” Steve smiled, not quite understanding the gravity but totally and wholeheartedly ready to figure it out. Bucky laughed and pulled away for a moment to check his pocket watch. “Time to go?”  
  
“Christmas isn’t going to ruin itself,” he winked. Steve stuck his hands in his pockets and shivered.  
  
“Need any elves?” He asked hopefully. “I carry toys in the snow like a pro. You’ve seen my references.”  
  
“No offense, but Brooklyn’s weak compared to Siberia, kid.” Bucky grinned. Steve looked at him with that ache he recognized, the empty worry of hundreds of years of cold waiting on the other side, and he couldn’t walk away. “If I’m fast on New Year’s, I might have a little time before they drag me back. What are you doing New Year’s Eve?” Steve considered it for a moment.  
  
“I suppose I’ll be renewing my passport and buying the heaviest Siberian coat I can get in weak Brooklyn for my desperately needed vacation,” Steve challenged, pulling Bucky’s face to his. “I’ll need to visit and file a proper complaint with your employer. You ruined my Christmas, after all.” Bucky smiled between soft, flurried kisses.  
  
“That’s funny,” he said, “I think you saved mine."

**Author's Note:**

> KIDS FALL IN LOVE SO FAST THESE DAYS, HUH? Here's hoping Steve gets a job as the Spirit of Independence Day...
> 
> Any inconsistencies in the mythos or culture are my fault and surely not Russia's. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good Boxing Day!


End file.
